John Sarv

Holy Hieromartyr John Sarv, a protopresbyter, in the world John Romanovich Sarv, was born in 1867 in the Livonia province, in the family of a landless peasant. He graduated from the Riga Theological Seminary, received a post as psalmist and soon was ordained priest for the church in the village of Olgin Krest, Gdov district, Saint Petersburg province. Wishing to study at the Theological Academy, he asked Metropolitan Palladius (Raev) for a place in a church in Saint Petersburg and in 1896 was moved to the capital of the Empire, to the church of the Greek embassy. Entering the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, Father John, besides study and service in church, gave much time to school work, teaching the Law of God in several schools. In 1902 he graduated from the Academy, with the degree of candidate in theology. From 1904 he served at the church of the Transfiguration on the Zabalkansky (today Moskovsky) prospect, and in 1912 became rector, being already a protopresbyter. He served there until 1927 and at the same time directed the Vonifatievsky temperance society. At the end of the 1920s he was expelled from Leningrad and went to Tikhvin, where he continued his pastoral work.

In 1934 Father John was arrested. At the interrogations he refused to give any statement and was the only one of those arrested then in Tikhvin in church matters who behaved so. He was given a suspended sentence and freed. At that time he was dean of the churches of Tikhvin. In 1937 through Tikhvin and its environs, as through the whole country, a new wave of arrests passed. Together with Father John Sarv there were imprisoned in Tikhvin, as accused, fourteen people: seven priests, the abbess of the Tikhvin convent of the Entry into the Temple and six laymen. All were declared a single counterrevolutionary group that had acted in the city of Tikhvin. The leader of the group was declared to be the dean of the city, Protopresbyter John Sarv, and the whole file was entitled "Sarv Ivan Romanovich and others". All the clergy in the file were shot, the others received ten years in a camp. Five priests and the abbess Ioannikia refused, in spite of the torments, to admit guilt and to denounce the others, showing a rare example of unanimous Christian courage. Protopresbyter John Sarv and the venerable martyr Hegumen Arsenius (Dmitriev), the venerable martyr Ioannikia (Kozhevnikova), and the holy hieromartyrs Basil Kandelabrov, Nicholas Pokrovsky, Emilian Panasevich and Nicholas Zelenov were shot in Tikhvin on 3 December 1937.

The Church commemorates him on 3 December, the day of his death, in the new style, on 1 December in the Synaxis of the Saints of Estonia, on the movable day of the synaxis of the new martyrs and on 11 July (a movable day) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg.